The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has come across a large number of cases where telecom operators had high call drop rate but reported that the base station in that area “did not exist” to meet the quality of service benchmarks.

Telecom operator are allowed to report a base station as “did not exist” if the particular site is under repair or decommissioned.

Transparency Initiative

In a bid to bring in more transparency, TRAI has asked telecom operators to give details about active base stations and those which are decommissioned. “While analysing the Drop Call Rate (DCR) matrix, that large number of circumstances reported to the Authority for DCR, which are as high as 6.3 per cent, are under the DCR code ‘DNE’ (Does not exist). To have a clear view of the status of BTS/node(s) operations the details of the date of commissioning or de-commissioning of Base Stations/nodes, are essential to verify the use of correct DCR code,” TRAI said in a circular.

 The regulator has further asked telecom operators to furnish details of type of connectivity- fibre/wireless/others for each base station because the quality of delivery of service of any base station is also dependent on the capacity of back-haul connectivity.

 Operators have also been told to provide details of 5G base stations in their respective networks. “Considerable number of 5G sites have been commissioned by various service providers and services are being offered to the subscribers to the large base of consumers, therefore, the details of such 5G base Stations and cells are essential for the purpose of assessment of Quality of Service,” Trai said. Operators have been told to furnish these details within twenty one days after the end of every quarter.

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